•  123
    Mill and the Limits of Freedom of Expression
    International Journal of Applied Philosophy 32 (1): 1-18. 2018.
    The rise of fake news, climate change denial, and the anti-vaccination movement all pose important challenges to contemporary views about freedom of expression. This paper attempts to delineate the limits of freedom of expression, specifically with regard to truth, lies, and harm. My strategy is to offer a critical reading of John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty to demonstrate its enduring relevance to contemporary issues in the freedom of expression. My critical reading of Mill provides guidance on wh…Read more
  •  45
    Should Gender Reassignment Surgery be Publicly Funded?
    Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 15 (4): 527-534. 2018.
    Transgender people have among the highest rates of suicide attempts of any group in society, driven strongly by the perception that they do not belong in the sex of their physical body. Gender reassignment surgery is a procedure that can change the transgender person’s physical body to accord with their gender identity. The procedure raises important ethical and distributive justice concerns, given the controversy of whether it is a cosmetic or medical procedure and the economic costs associated…Read more
  •  33
    Facts, principles, and global justice: does the ‘real world’ matter?
    Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 26 (6): 810-830. 2023.
    The world is undeniably full of injustice. Many feel that much political philosophy is practically impotent and engaged instead in overly abstract theorising insufficiently sensitive to the realities of the world. One response to this concern is David Miller’s influential model of evidence-based political philosophy, which claims to be sensitive to empirical evidence from the social sciences, takes seriously people’s opinions, and defends the role of facts in grounding normative principles. Usin…Read more
  •  32
    Two-Level Luck Egalitarianism: Reconciling Rights, Respect, and Responsibility
    Journal of Value Inquiry 55 (3): 543-566. 2020.
    Luck egalitarianism has come under a lot of criticism for its apparent harshness towards negligent victims of voluntary actions (the harshness objection) and its inability to respond to morally-acceptable voluntary acts that lead to disadvantage (the discrimination objection). This paper surveys a series of responses in the luck egalitarian literature, showing that for the most part each one is unable to respond, on its own, to the crux of the objections. These responses often face a dilemma: Ei…Read more
  •  27
    Structure, choice, and responsibility
    Ethics and Behavior 30 (3): 230-246. 2020.
    In a well-known passage from 'The Red Lily', Anatole France retorts ironically: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal loaves of bread”. The passage highlights the different burdens experienced by different people when deciding to act or not act in certain ways. This paper critically analyzes this problem; specifically, how we ought to allocate personal responsibility for actions performed by agents who each exp…Read more
  •  17
    The Expressive Function of Healthcare
    The Journal of Ethics 27 (3): 329-353. 2023.
    This paper aims to square our considered judgements about the moral significance of healthcare with various empirical and conceptual challenges about its role in a theory of justice. I do so by defending the moral significance of healthcare by reference to a central but neglected dimension – healthcare’s expressive function. Over and above its influence on health outcomes and other metrics of justice (such as opportunity or welfare), and despite its relatively limited impact on population health…Read more